#crop_seed_engineering

INNOVATIONS IN AGRICULTURE: WHAT THE BILL AND MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION HAVE BEEN INITIATING ALONG WITH R.I.P.E. PROJECT MANAGER, STEPHEN LONG.

THE STATS

☆ The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization says 70% more food will be needed by 2050.

THE 1ST GREEN REVOLUTION

☆ In the mid-twentieth-century, when many parts of the world where nearly starving, the Green Revolution prevented this and 1 billion lives were spared.

☆ This was achieved through irrigation, hybridized seeds and man-made fertilizers and pesticides from industrialized countries, sent to the third world.

THE R.I.P.E. PROJECT

☆ The R.IP.E project is initiating what it hopes will become a revival: egging a twenty-first-century Green Revolution on by genetically engineering crop plant seeds, in order for crop plants to photosynthesize more efficiently.

INEFFICIENT PHOTOSYNTHESIS RATES IN CROP PLANTS AND THE LACK OF DARK GREEN LEAF MATERIAL - THE GAUGE, DETERMINING CHLOROPHYLL CONTENT.

☆ In crop plants, phototosynthesis has been found to be in short supply - with farmers using weak parent plant genes in seeds for the new season's sowing - due to a gap in the evolution of crop plants; as the plants adapt to surrounding plants, bugs ,birds and small animals; ensuring a win over their competitors for sun, water and nutrient-rich and oxygenated soil - photosynthesis necessities and biodiversity fundamentals.

DYNAMIC CONTACT - A TERM USED IN CORPORATE MARKETING

DYNAMIC INTERACTION - The special, symbiotic, beneficial or parasitic relationship between an ecosystem's species, that egg on adaptations in a particular species.

☆ Crop plants are not in the same Dynamic Contact with organisms as eco-system regulars because all and any plants that happen to sprout near or on a crop site are usually uprooted or are treated with herbicides. This is in an effort to keep all available natural resources for the crop plant to make use of alone. Also, due to pesticides/insecticides, crop plants have very little Dynamic Contact with insects, very necessary for the crop plants evolutionary adaptations, as insects teach crop plants how to protect their yield and other functions like maximizing the surface area in the sun but they also pollinate - yes! pollinate! - crop plants.

I think in recent years, it seems, insects have all but died out. No glow-worms, earthworms, dung beetles, fireflies, silkworm and so on. My theory is that we can thank our farm food crop pickers and planters as the pollen would probably get stuck between fingerprint ridges and that is what has been fertilizing many plants.

TIRED SOIL - DEVOID OF NUTRIENTS AS CHEMICAL FERTILIZERS LEAVE BEHIND NITRATE CRYSTALS (300X MORE TOXIC THAN CO2) AND THEIR PRESENCE ALSO KILLS OFF EARTHWORMS - NECESSARY TO OXYGENATE TOPSOIL AND BIO- DEGRADE ORGANIC MATERIALS LEAVING BEHIND NUTRIENTS.

☆ Also, crop plants are usually planted, crop upon crop, year after year, draining the soil of necessary nutrients needed to facilitate photosynthesis.

Agapanthus leaves, showing the high concentration of chlorophyll, visible through the dark green pigmentation of the leaves.

EVOLUTION WOULD INADVERTENTLYKILL OFF LONE CROP PLANTS.

☆ Evolution's natural selection would focus on survival and reproduction and therefore would focus on pollination. So in theory, for example, the plant would adapt by producing a concentrated but light and maybe sticky, pollen, easily detached by bee legs and snout, thereby maximizing the survival of the crop plant by trying to accelerate population growth rate.

25% MORE CARBON DIOXIDE IN OUR ATMOSPHERE IN THE LAST 50 YEARS. CARBON BASINS, IN THE FORM OF ICEBERGS, FORESTS AND SEA AND RIVERBEDS ARE IMPERITIVE FOR EXCESS CARBON TO BE ABSORBED. REFORESTATION PROJECTS WILL ABSORB THIS INCREASE IN CARBON DIOXIDE.

☆ In the last 50 years, a major molecule needed in photosynthesis - carbon dioxide - has increased in our atmosphere, by 25%.

☆ The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has funded the genetic engineering of crop seeds in order to increase food production, globally.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation logo

☆ In the tobacco plant leaf there is a stoma which enables gaseous exchange which, during a drought, would retain water. Hoping that the gene responsible for the tobacco plant's stoma function could be implanted in the crop plant and assist to shed heat energy, emanating from a moistureless, evaporated surface and topsoil and atmosphere quicker, genetic engineers have attempted to isolate the gene responsible for the tobacco plant's stoma and insert it into crop plants.

☆ After genetic engineers at R.I.P.E. transferred genes from the Thale Cress plant - three variants thereof - they had crop yields that were increased by 30%, 19.5% and 20%.

Thale Cress

GENETICALLY ENGINEERED THALE CRESS IS A WATERWISE G.M. PLANT.

☆ The same amount of water was used for genetically engineered plants, compared to the parent plant that had not been modified yet, and only 1% more nitrogen was used by the GM Thale Cress.

WE CAN CONCLUDE THAT INDOOR FOOD GROWING WOULD NOT BE TAXING ON AVAILABLE WATER SUPPLY.

☆ Photosynthesis is a complex procedure which requires over 160 discrete steps. The program used for dreaming up potential combinations of genetic engineering - taking one species useful characteristics and then inserting the gene responsible and inserting it into another species lacking that particular function - has been attempting billions of manipulations, mathematically and in a Latin kind of way, depending on what is possible and hopefully solutions will be made commercially available soon.

My personal opinion is that in order to reduce heat energy in the atmosphere, we need to:

1. Blow up rock formations. Use smaller paving tiles and bricks etc. and use an organic or non heat conductive grout in between.

2. Stop using chemical fertillizer altogether, as the Nitrate crystals left behind are also big conductors of heat. It also kills off earthworms, who cool the soil with their oxygen by-product.

3. Use the gene that generate the leaves of the Agapanthus or the Arum Lily. In addition, if the Arum lily rhyzome root system gene can be implanted in the crop plant; the seed then mixed with a tree that produces a lot of shade but mottled shade (maybe making mini trees the same height as the crop plant) and establishes it's roots deeper down in the soil than the crop plant and then, lastly, the stuff on the ends of those backscrubbers from Zimbabwe; I think it's called whittles; if those 3 species could be joined to the crop plant seed (a 4-in-1 kind of seed) we would have some shade, bio-diversity and the rhyzome "creeper" root that sprouts the plant in a planter's ROW, saving space inbetween; maximizing yield and covering bare earth. The whittles will act as a filter between the sun and moisture in the topsoil as well as act as a carbon basin foundation.

The farmer would also never have to pull out harvest plant leftovers or burn the field as the root system would make the crop plant an evergreen plant, meaning it would not have to be sowed and cut down - only the harvest fruits removed; which would/could produce food all year, potentially.

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GENETIC ENGINEERING IN CROP SEEDS - THE MIELIE PLANT POTENTIAL COMBOS

A mielie plant has very light green leaves; almost a powdery green, which means that there is not alot of photosynthesis that occurs in the plant; as a dark green pigmentation of the leaves is indicative of a high chlorophyll content and a high incidence of #photosynthesis.

The powdery lime-coloured of mielie plant

This can account for the low nutritional value of mielies; and the various products manufactured from mielies - such as mielie meel - as can the low nutrient level in the soil, which is one of a complex myriad of factors which has lowered the photosynthesis effigacy of crop plants over a period, spanning eons, of organised agriculture.

The leaves of an Agapanthus plant

By isolating a gene in the Agapanthus praecox responsible for a) the long, sharp and dark green leaves and then inserting it into the mielie plant, the lack of photosynthesis will no longer be a problem as the plant will have the much needed chlorophyll. Also, though, if genetic engineers can b) isolate the fruiting/flowering gene and insert it into the mielie plant, one can have the photosynthesis benefit of a clump of lower dark green leaves and also the stalk of flowers which grow out of a clump of Agapanthus leaves. This stalk produces flowers or in this case, if inserted into a mielie plant, the mielies, meaning clumps of mielie, thereby making better use of space.

Agapanthus: frost durable

The Agapanthus is frost durable and whilst the leaves are evergreen, the flowers bloom in high summer and are perrenial, which means that if conditions can be kept at a summer climate, the mielie plant, which has the Agapanthus leaves and fruiting stalk, it can produce all year round, being impervious to outdoor frost, which could get in through the underfoot soil, if mielie plants are not planted from their own soil growing pods.

Agapanthus are easy to grow on most terrains and have a clingy root system that can even be planted even on declines. It is also apt to fighting soil and wind erosion.

Perhaps, if grown in an indoor food-growing greenhouse and a frame held individual plants at a steep slanting incline, the plant could grow a node of Agapathus leaves, then a node of flowering fruit or mielies and then a repeat of this on and on as far as the plant will allow but that having been said, an Agapanthus' leaves on a mielie plant would cure the lack of leaf material for photosynthesis.

An indoor food-growing operation. The pink/red L.E.D. growing lights have been found to be harm-free, unlike UV lights.

Another plant which could solve the farmer's problem with tilling soil, burning last year's crop and having to replant new seeds every year would be the Arum Lily.

The Arum Lily with it's dark green leaves needed by lagging crop plants for photosynthesis

One of the problems we face, though, in agriculture, is farmers using this year's seeds for next year's crop. Buying new seeds is imperative. The seed-sharing amongst farmers when one's crop was not successful is counter-productive and using every year's dying crop plant seeds? for the next year planting, is completely without merit.

The Arum lily, as a plant which has a rhyzhome root system; similar to an above ground creeper, except that it is the root system which sprouts new plant bulbs as it creeps along; mitigating the need for groundcover in between crop plants, growing so closely together that it would automatically lower surface and atmospheric temperature, due to increased plant material above and below ground. It would also mean that replanting seeds each year would be unnecessary.

The rhyzome root system of an Arum Lily, propagatebest when grown in containers and need to kept in a moist soil or wetlands type of soil moisture level. Undercover fields or fields with an origami-inspired dome would be necessary to avoid too much evaporation and a dry soil developing.

Written by Simone Slade

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